Excessive ferocity due to caution

After hearing those few words, Zhao Yi knew exactly what had happened between Qin Zheng and his wife.

"It seems your wife made you decide."

Qin Zheng remained silent for a long time, as if he were mourning for his wife, or as if he was deep in thought.

"I need to finish what I'm doing before I go see her."

"Otherwise, I would have no face to save."

He raised his head, and the bloodshot in his eyes slowly faded.

"How can I help you?"

Zhao Yi asked.

Qin Zheng's gaze became incredibly firm.

"Enter the capital and launch a massive purge!"

Zhao Yi shrugged:

"I want to too, but as you can see from my current situation, I've offended two of the four major families, making it virtually impossible for me to enter the capital."

Qin Zheng said earnestly:

I will help you.

Zhao Yi raised an eyebrow:

"Can you represent the Qin family?"

Qin Zheng's expression was calm, and his tone was as firm as a pine tree on a cliff and as solid as a rock.

"Before I die, I will belong to the Qin family."

Zhao Yi crossed his legs and pondered for a while.

"What good will doing this do you?"

Qin Zheng tilted his head back and drank another glass of wine.

"There's no benefit to it."

"But I can tell you why."

"If we allow the capital to continue developing like this, the peace and security that our predecessors won with their blood and sweat will be completely destroyed in our hands!"

At this point, Qin Zheng's tone carried a hint of hidden sorrow.

"Those people guarding outside the fence... are very old."

"Whether human or ghost, any creature from the Fourth Realm will eventually be killed by time."

Zhao Yi remained calm and composed, saying indifferently:

"We should show those people in the capital a thing or two."

Qin Zheng shook his head:

"It's no use."

"People get used to a comfortable life and their hearts have long since drifted apart."

"Those who should know the truth all know it, but those people either don't care at all about the sky falling and the earth collapsing after their deaths, or they are willing to kill the traitors but powerless to reverse the situation."

"The rulers of the four clans only care about their own petty gains. Even if they know the cruel truth, they feel that with the old man holding things up outside, the sky won't fall."

At this point, Qin Zheng's tone carried a barely perceptible hint of hatred.

He hates these people.

I hate these people for being so selfish and so naive.

"Even if they don't want to, they can cultivate young people with a chivalrous spirit to take on the responsibility."

Zhao Yi's tone was indifferent, as if he did not want to get involved in this matter.

Qin Zheng sneered:

"That's my sister."

"My father initially trained my older sister, not me."

"She is calmer and more talented than me."

"But she's dead."

Zhao Yi looked up:

"How did he die?"

Qin Zheng clenched his fists.

"She went out to represent her father at the highest meeting of the four major families to decide the future development of the capital, but she was beheaded."

"Many eyewitnesses from the Lü family insist that my sister committed suicide in a fit of anger because her proposal was not approved."

Zhao Yi laughed:

"He cut off his own head?"

Qin Zheng felt as if his chest was about to explode:

"Yes, suicide."

Zhao Yi sighed:

"If all those who hold power in the four clans are parasites, then those who enter next... can only be parasites as well."

Birds of a feather flock together.

Qin Zheng closed his eyes.

"Those old bastards in the Qin family who coveted power set their sights on me after my sister died."

"They knew that my father was dying and that power would most likely fall into my hands in the future."

"Unlike other families, the Qin family suffered a severe curse long before the capital was established. During a great battle between their ancestor and a bishop of a large cult, the curse was inescapable and affected the entire Qin family!"

"Anyone who is crowned as the patriarch of the Qin family will eventually be affected by the curse, haunted by death, and their lifespan will be no more than three to five years..."

"The Jiang family was also in dire straits at the time, with their family fortunes declining to the extreme. In order to ensure the continuation of their bloodlines, the two families signed a special contract."

"The Qin family gave their family's Fortune Cauldron to the Jiang family to help the Jiang family continue their family's fortune. In return, the Jiang family needs to use the power of cause and effect within the cauldron to extend the life of one person in the Qin family."

"Later on, the Jiang family simply started to form marriage alliances with the Qin family for generations."

"That's why every generation of the Qin family head and his wife has a short lifespan."

"Moreover, in order to avoid the sudden death of the patriarch and internal strife within the family, the Qin family has a more diversified distribution of power, unlike other families where the patriarch holds absolute power."

"Our clan wasn't originally the main branch of the Qin family, but later the other members of the Qin family became smarter. Since they could obtain enormous power without becoming the head of the family, why risk their lives to fight for that little bit of decision-making power?"

"And so, our branch of the family rose to power."

Seeing that the bottle was empty, Zhao got up and took a new bottle from the mahogany cabinet next to him.

Qin Zheng looked at his wine glass and said self-deprecatingly:

Did I...drink too fast?

Zhao Yi placed a new bottle of wine in front of him:

Wu Liang likes to drink.

"So the abandoned city may not have much else, but it has plenty of alcohol."

"Enough is enough."

Qin Zheng opened the bottle of wine, didn't even fill the glass, and then tilted his head back and chugged it down.

"I've been living very carefully all these years, creating the illusion for those old folks that my father is still alive."

"The Qin family is watching me far too closely."

"Maintaining a cautious attitude, I have always tried my best to do only what I am supposed to do and not arouse suspicion from others."

Zhao sighed:

"Unfortunately, your wife became the last straw that broke your spirit."

Qin Zheng lowered his eyes.

"Things I wouldn't have dared to do before... this time, I'm going to do them all."

Zhao Yi asked:

"What are the elderly people in the capital blocking?"

Qin Zheng:

"The Church of the Skull".

"A hungry, drooling wolf."

"The weakest cult when the capital was first established now treats the capital like a behemoth kept in its own pigsty."

Zhao Yi frowned:

"Is the Church of the Skull really that powerful?"

Qin Zheng's expression was solemn.

"The reason why the capital city hasn't completely become the church's backyard is because there's still a bunch of old fogies stubbornly holding on at the fence."

Zhao Yi:

"Has the capital city never produced any truly capable talents since then?"

Qin Zheng shook his head and smiled bitterly:

"few."

"Most of them are at the Sovereign Realm. They can be of great use, but they are far from being able to stand alone."

Zhao Yi thought of the people in the slacker guild and asked:

Do you know Huang Quan, Liu Ruoqing, Jiang Xiao, or any of these people?

When the veterans of the slacker guild were mentioned, Qin Zheng nodded.

"They belong to the entertainment company's influence, but their appearance was very sudden. It seems that they were assigned some mission by the seniors of the outer Tianhai Pass of the capital and went to the Immortal Road."

Zhao Yi frowned:

"Is the Church related to the Path to Immortality?"

Qin Zheng made no attempt to hide anything and revealed everything he knew.

"I don't know... their operation is clandestine."

"Some say the church's stronghold is deep within the Immortal Path, and these people are there to fight back; others say they're going to the Immortal Path to seek opportunities, hoping to break through to the post-god realm and turn the tide..."

"There are many different opinions and all sorts of rumors."

"But I'm more inclined to believe my father's guess."

"Those people went to the Immortal Path because they wanted to find... the Holy Mountain."

PS: Chapter 1.